Agenda item

Councillor Glynis Phillips, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Michael Fletcher, Head of HR Partnering and Advisory have been invited to present a report on the Draft Workforce Strategy.

The Committee is recommended to consider the report, ask questions and AGREE any recommendations they may wish to make to Cabinet accordingly.

Councillor Glynnis Phillips, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Michael Fletcher, Head of HR Partnering and Advisory were invited to present a report on the Council’s draft Workforce Strategy.

Councillor Phillips advised the Committee that the document in front of them

was an early draft rather than a near-final version. Whilst it had been available

for discussion within the organisation a new HR director would be joining the Council in September and it would be necessary to get agreement on it with the new post-holder before progressing to Cabinet, likely for consideration in November. The overall aim of the strategy was to ensure the Council had talented, committed and creative staff to enable it to be an efficient, high-performing organisation. The draft strategy sought to put forward how this might be achieved, focusing on four key areas: i) Attract, recruit and retain talented people, ii) Promote a positive and inclusive working environment, iii) Enable growth and development, iv) Develop leadership capability and high performance. The success of the strategy would be monitored through a set of key performance indicators, including ones over the Committee’s concerns in previous items around agency spend and staff absence. An annual review of progress would be taking place, and it was offered to bring that back to the Committee.

In response, the Committee made the following observations and raise the following issues for discussion:

-        Military Families. In light of the high number of military families in Oxfordshire, who face particular challenges with accessing work, that a dedicated work stream to access that talent pool would be worthwhile developing, particularly if it involved partnering with other councils to provide support to armed forces family members to identify suitable alternatives around their new locations.

-        Internal promotion. The importance of opportunities for staff to advance within the organisation was underlined as a core element in addressing the degree of turnover within the organisation. The Council’s target of achieving 160 internal promotions from a figure of 152 was questioned as being unambitious. It was explained the figure of 152 actually represented a high watermark, so the target was to go beyond the Council’s previous best performance.

-        Following on from the previous item, a breakdown of the 5310 staff working for the Council between full time and part time was requested, and for the figures to be benchmarked against the figures five years previously.

-        Corporate culture. The ability of staff to challenge behaviour which did not accord with the Council’s values was questioned. The Council had in place formal whistleblowing and grievance processes, but, as would be explored in the following item, the Council was putting a lot of effort into embedding its values through less formal means via the Delivering the Future Together programme. Programme champions were already starting to receive and raise feedback from staff who had witnessed behaviour in need of challenge which did not meet the threshold of a formal grievance. Further to this, the work of union representatives and the Council’s relationship with them was also noted as a source of support for staff members. It was requested Cllr Mallon’s previous union membership be noted. Within the formal processes available, protections existed to enable issues to be raised to managers and directors outside of the employee’s own directorate or line-management structure.

It was AGREED to submit a report to Cabinet recommending that the Council develop workstreams to target and support military families to work for the Council.

It was AGREED that the Committee’s recommendation for five year data around staff numbers be appended to the Workforce Data report being submitted to Cabinet.